


Getting under the skin

by Hypatia_66



Series: Misleading appearances [4]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Burns, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Halloween, Masks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16425743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: After an explosion, Illya has been taken to a burns unit for a skin transplant - why? Who is running it?





	Getting under the skin

 

He didn’t know why he was here. He didn’t know who these people were.

They pulled him into a sitting position. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

Fingers pulled at his face around his mouth and nose and then he _could_ breathe. He opened his eyes. A terrible figure looked back at him. He cried out and shrank back, only to realise that the figure was doing the same thing. It was his own reflection. Hideous and such a strange colour.

“He was so good looking, it’s a shame.” A voice came from nearby.

He turned his head with difficulty; his neck seemed trapped in some way, his skin pulled and stretched strangely. Several people, including a woman, stood there watching him. “How do you like your new face?” she said, “and your hands? I’m sorry about the hair, of course.”

He blinked and lifted his hands – they were like claws. “What…?” He gazed at her in anguish.

“What happened to you? You were badly burned. We’ve given you a new skin, Mr Kuryakin. You’ll have to stay here until you become more presentable.”

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“I’m Doctor Heron. You’re in our burns unit. You need to sleep now.”

He said nothing but fell back. Only his eyes showed any expression. As she left, she switched out the light. Hot tears filled his eyes and overflowed. He couldn’t feel them on his face…

 _He couldn’t feel them on his face_ … He put his hands to his eyes, touched his brow, his nose, his head… He couldn’t feel anything; there was no sensation either in his strange hands or on his face. He sat up clawing at his strange wrinkled skin. What had happened? He lay helpless in the dark, weak, frightened and appalled.

<><><> 

“How did it happen?” asked Waverly.

“Well, I didn’t really see,” said Napoleon. “After the device exploded, some medics took him away before I could get down to him. They said he was badly burned and they were taking him to the new burns unit nearby. More appropriate than bringing him here – he should get the right care there.”

“How is he?”

“They said they were trying a new technique,” Napoleon replied. “Some artificial skin has been transplanted. It should gradually become sensitive like his own skin. He isn’t being allowed visitors just yet in case of cross-infection, but I’m going anyway.”

<><><> 

Illya had slept – not very well but he had slept. He felt very hot and when he sat up, his head swam. When he rubbed his hands over his tired eyes to help him wake up, his sense of touch seemed to have increased slightly. His skin was still rough but now reptilian rather than rubbery. A faint rasp around his chin suggested his beard was growing but no razor would perform over that surface, even if he had such a thing. And he had nothing.

He looked down at his naked body. It wasn’t his own naturally tanned skin. Instead it was a curious raw shade, and hairless. He was repelled by it. Anyone would be. Doctor Heron was right – what would happen to him if he left? Who would believe what or who he was?

He had wept helplessly last night. Today, he needed to take control and start questioning like his normal self. His normal self was also hungry and had other bodily functions to act upon. He looked around the room and saw an open door into a bathroom – well, thank God for that, at least. Now to get there.

Even getting out of bed and moving was hard enough; washing proved to be a very tricky business and brushing his teeth impossible. Once he’d got the water from the shower to flow, using his all-but-useless hands and an elbow, it rolled off his strange skin without wetting it. Stepping out, feeling worse than unclean, he examined himself in the mirror over the handbasin and tried to feel the horrific face with his almost-sensitive fingers – and it was then he noticed how many fingers there were. He almost sobbed again. Stop it, Kuryakin. Look again! … Think! …The extra ones on each hand seemed to be vestigial. There was no feeling in them whatsoever. Was it a clue to his present state? He returned as quickly as movement allowed to the bedroom and, taking one excess digit between his teeth, tugged.

Hearing distant footsteps, he dropped his hand and covered himself with a sheet. The door opened and Doctor Heron entered carrying a tray of food which she put down on the bed. She had also brought clothing, which she deposited on the chair.

Illya tried to pour tea into the cup but could get no grip with his hand either on the pot or the cup. “You’ll have to pour,” he said, his voice emerging rustily from his throat. He then tried to pick up the toast she had brought and failed. “And feed me, too.”

Drinking the tea was no problem but eating was strangely difficult. His jaws seemed to be clenched too tight. “I can’t chew,” he said, trying to choke down some of the toast.

Doctor Heron looked at his head and neck closely. He shrank back as she started to manipulate the skin under his chin and round his neck. “Sit still!” she commanded and continued to smooth and rub the skin. “Is that better?”

He glared at her and moved his jaw. “A bit,” he said.

“Good, because that’ll have to do. How was using the bathroom? I don’t just mean washing.”

His reptilian skin was already red, but Illya blushed – he felt hot anyway. “I managed,” he said reluctantly.

“It doesn’t need stretching?”

Aghast at the idea of what she might want to do to him next, Illya said, “No!”

“Did it stretch in the night at all?”

Her mocking smile suggested she could only mean one thing and he shook his head decidedly. His head felt oddly heavy as he did so. Another clue to his state?

She finished feeding him and pouring tea into his mouth and stood up. “Do you need help dressing? I expect you do…” and she pulled a tunic over his head and dragged his arms through its sleeves. Then, having pushed his legs into loose pants, she made him stand, pulled them up and fastened the tie waist. “If you need the bathroom, just call and I’ll come and undo it,” she said, which was far from reassuring. Then she left him, taking the tray with her.

He returned to tugging at one of the vestigial fingers with his teeth. It didn’t hurt at all. Instead, it stretched and pulled away from his hand, attached only by a tube of empty skin. He dropped the finger and bit at the empty skin until it tore, revealing his own skin inside.

And started to be reborn.

<><><> 

As the last of the strange skin was torn and stripped away, he looked once more into the mirror and saw himself: his own face, his hair clinging in his sweat to his scalp, his hands, and his own skin on a rather sticky body. He stepped into the shower again where he could now feel the water washing the soap and sweat off his skin. It was relief to brush his teeth, but without a razor he could do nothing about his beard. It had hurt pulling the disgusting skin away from his face, like pulling off a plaster; the skin covering his head had come off in a single piece and taken some of his bristles with it.

Now to get away.

But Dr Heron was waiting for him with several minions when he came out of the bathroom. She had a syringe in her hand. “We’ll have to try a different cure, Mr Kuryakin,” she said.

<><><> 

<><> 

Had it been a dream? He sat staring at the wall. Everything around him was dissolving… fading.

Was everything gone, was he dead? His life rounded with the final sleep already? He hadn’t wanted to die… not yet.

The noises off failed to register with him – meaningless sounds. He shut his eyes and sat still for a while. He didn’t move when hands touched him, caressed his head, said his name. Someone shook him gently; he opened hazy blue eyes and looked up into concerned hazel ones.

“Are you all right?”

Remembering what he should always say, he replied, “I’m fine.”

Napoleon – that was the name – was now looking around at the remains of his discarded skin. “Good God, Illya, what’s this?”

“My skin.”

Napoleon looked in horror at the repellent remains of Illya’s sloughed outer layer. “Let’s get you back and take this with us for analysis. Are you sure you’re OK?”

“Yes,” said Illya expressionlessly. Napoleon smiled reassuringly at him. Illya stretched his mouth in return – was that the remembered response? It didn’t seem to be the right one.

“Illya, what did she do to you?”

“Do to me? …I don’t know.” He didn’t want to confess that he had died. It might upset Napoleon – and for a moment wondered why that mattered.

<><><> 

“Are you all right, Illya?” Napoleon repeated as they entered Del Floria’s.

Illya looked up. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Just checking.”

“I’m fine.”

“OK, we’ll go to Medical after we’ve seen Waverly. Wait here,” said Napoleon, making him sit in a corner of a sofa in the reception area where he was watched with concern by the woman on the desk. “I’m going to take this skin stuff down to the lab. Back in a minute.”

<><><>

“Are you with us, Mr Kuryakin?” said a voice.

He choked and struggled to get free of the firm grip but relaxed hearing a familiar voice. “Illya? Illya… wake up!” Someone was slapping his face. “Is there some water, sir?” And then someone was tipping water into his mouth. “Illya, what’s wrong?”

He opened his eyes. Mr Waverly stood opposite watching him gravely, Napoleon was bending over him, just visible as though through a veil.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” he whispered.

“Take him down to Medical, Mr Solo. Get them to run tests right away.”

Napoleon’s alarm increased when Illya rose and came with him without question or complaint, quite docile. He held him by the arm as if afraid he would slip through his fingers like some insubstantial element. “Stay with me, Illya,” he said gently.

“I didn’t want to tell you before… Napoleon.”

“What is it, Illya?”

“It’s all gone. I died. Will you bury me?”

There was a sharp intake of breath and the grip on his arm tightened. He was led gently away.

The walls came at him. He could see through them. The city had vanished, had become a flat island once more, water lapping everywhere as the sea rose. Pure spirit, he moved along the disappearing corridor, one hand on the wall to keep it there, stepped into the elevator with Napoleon holding his arm and descended through the air into another misty domain.

**< ><><> **

Because Illya seemed so calm, Napoleon left him undergoing tests while he went back to the lab to see there were any clues from the strange skin he had brought back.

“It’s remarkable stuff, Mr Solo. Look here, at this head.”

The dreadful remains of a face and domed skull stared dead-eyed and open-mouthed up at him.

“It had started to become part of Dr Kuryakin – see these hairs, some of his beard has come off in it, and here in other parts of the skin, there are strange growths as if something was trying to take signals from the nerves in his own skin.”

They stared at each other. “You know, if he hadn’t managed to remove it when he did, it might have been too late,” the Section Eight man said.

“You mean, he could have been stuck in it?”

“Quite possibly. It was becoming part of him. If it were used for benign purposes, it would be a medical breakthrough but as it is, this is pretty alarming. What could they have been planning?”

Napoleon returned to the infirmary to sit with his silent friend who was being examined by a doctor, as astonished by his quiescence as he was usually annoyed by his belligerence.

“It’s a very strange state he’s in, Mr Solo. Not like himself at all.”

“He thinks he’s dead,” said Napoleon. “God knows what she gave him. Have there been any results of the blood tests yet?”

“It looks like some kind of very powerful blocking agent. His heart rate has slowed and his breathing is slow too, as if he were starting to hibernate like a bear or something. It’s a wonder he’s been able to move.”

The subject of this discussion remained oblivious, uninterested, apparently unaware of their conversation. Napoleon described what the lab people had found. “It would give me nightmares just to think of wearing such a disgusting object,” said the doctor. “It must have been a relief to get rid of it – like the dead skin of a snake.”

“It’s gone. Everything’s gone. The city has gone. We’re all dead.” Illya’s voice came and faded.

The doctor looked at Napoleon who had put an arm around Illya. “What can he mean?”

“Whatever this blocking agent is, it’s trying to kill something in him.”

“Making him live a nightmare, by the sound of it.”

“Can you help him?”

The doctor spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Normally, it’s a psychological problem but this seems to be a drug-induced paralysing despair. It may be gradually expelled from his body – we’d better keep him in for observation.”

There was no reaction from Illya to this pronouncement, which convinced Napoleon that it might, unusually, be the best thing. At least when he recovered, _if_ he recovered, it would be obvious from his behaviour. “I’ll stay with him,” he said. “Can you find me a comfortable chair?”

“Better than that – we’re not busy at the moment, you can have a bed.”

<><><> 

Several times in the night, Napoleon sat on his friend’s bed cooling him with wet cloths as he sweated through a dream, and calming him with reassuring words. “Just breathe, Illya; just breathe. Slowly now.”

In the morning, Illya opened his eyes and, seeing Napoleon asleep in the next bed, closed them again against the tears that came. “He’s dead, too,” he whispered.

Napoleon, alert to the slightest sound, woke, and turned to look at Illya. He smiled at him and just for a moment there was an answering gleam. But it faded too quickly.

He sat up and rubbed his head vigorously. Illya watched with a fixed intensity.

“Do you want to shower first?” said Napoleon.

Illya shook his head.

“OK, I’ll get up and go see what’s happening.”

Illya hadn’t moved when he emerged. “Okay, it’s your turn,” said Napoleon encouragingly. Illya looked up at him a little blankly, then stood up and went to the bathroom. Hearing him in the shower, Napoleon went back to the lab and returned with the mask Illya had torn off himself. As he arrived outside Illya’s room, he met the doctor who took it gingerly when he showed it to him. They entered the room together and found Illya wrapped in a towel looking at his clothes as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

Illya turned his head slowly and seeing the mask in the doctor’s hands, cried out and rose to his feet, turning as if to flee. Napoleon took him by the arm and made him sit down again. “It’s all right, Illya. It’s just a mask. You’re safe, you’re alive – _it_ isn’t, it never was. You’re _alive_ , my friend.”

Illya turned great blue eyes to his. “No. It’s real – nothing else is real.”

Napoleon put an arm around his shoulders. “Feel that? I’m real. You’re real.”

When he sat up and released him, Illya gasped, “Don’t let go, don’t let go!”

Napoleon gripped him again. “I’ve got you, Illya. You’re here with us – not dead.”

The doctor showed him the mask. “See, Illya, it’s an empty shell. It’s like a Halloween mask – it means nothing. You were poisoned – that’s why you think you’re dead.”

Illya shook his head. “We’re all dead – you, too. I have seen the city, razed to the ground, flooded by the sea. There’s nothing left.”

“Whatever you’ve seen, it was in a nightmare,” said Napoleon.

“No, when we came here, I had to hold the wall to keep it there.”

None of this made any kind of sense to the other two men. “It was a hallucination. You can suffer nightmares when you’re awake, you know,” said the doctor. “Someone put the image in your mind like they put your head inside this.”

Illya reached out hesitantly for the head and took it from the doctor. Feeling Illya’s pulse rocket and shake his body, Napoleon kept his arm around his partner’s shoulders while he examined it and felt Illya’s heartbeat begin to slow as his interest expanded. The pictures in his head were crowded out and it calmed the shaking. He looked up.

“It was beginning to feel part of me,” he said in a more normal voice. Napoleon and the doctor exchanged relieved glances. “I was starting to feel sensations with the hands but there were too many fingers. I had to tear them off, I couldn’t bear it.”

“Too many fingers?” said Napoleon, who had collected all the remains but hadn’t counted the fingers.

“Too many fingers, and no hair. And it was too tight everywhere, I could hardly move.”

“What happened? You’ve no wounds from the explosion – why did they take you?”

“I don’t know. How did you find me?”

“They hid you in plain sight – keeping you in isolation in case of cross infection, so no-one knew what was happening.”

“And the burns specialist – how was she allowed to practise like this?” The doctor was outraged.

“Do you remember her name?” Napoleon looked into his friend’s eyes challengingly.

“Doctor Heron… oh.”

“Yes, my friend.”

The doctor listening to this looked at them uncomprehendingly and said, “What?”

They both turned to him. “The heron family includes the egret,” said Napoleon.

The doctor remained perplexed. “Never mind, doctor,” Napoleon reassured him, “it’s just an ongoing assignment that we haven’t resolved.”

“Well, you certainly need to find her. This may be a perverted use of her skill, but if we could develop an artificial skin for burns patients, it would be miraculous.  We’ll run some tests on it and see what it’s made of.” He went to the door with the head and turned before leaving to say, “You should go home, Mr Kuryakin. You may have trouble sleeping for a while after this experience but get some rest if you can.”

<><><> 

Napoleon helped Illya to dress – even now he was unwontedly docile, though he snatched the comb out of Napoleon’s hand when he attempted to run it through his hair.

“How about shaving?” said Napoleon.

“Oh. I forgot.”

“You won’t get many kisses if you don’t.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Illya.

“Hmm,” said Napoleon, choosing not to go there. “Now, I’m taking you home – unless you’d like to stay in my apartment.”

“Thank you, Napoleon, I’ll go home – I’ll be fine. I’d just like to sleep.”

He fell asleep in the car. When he pulled up outside Illya’s apartment block, Napoleon touched his shoulder to wake him and said, “Were you dreaming? You were saying something – I couldn’t catch it.”

Illya frowned, “Was I? Yes, I was thinking of something…”

Napoleon followed him up the stairs to the apartment and watched as he disabled the security and also when he reset it. “Shall I make coffee?” he said.

“Tea for me.”

With coffee and tea on the table, they sat back, cups in hand. “Have you remembered what you were thinking in the car?” said Napoleon.

“I was thinking about the transience of everything, how much we take for granted – how suddenly everything seemed unreal. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep’.”

“And sometimes it’s like the Halloween nightmare you’ve just been part of – but not death.”

“Well, yes. I’m not dead, just sleepy. Are you staying or going?”

“I’ll leave you in peace. I’m going to be on Dr Egret’s trail. You sleep well and if you need me for any reason, just call, and if you don’t want to do that – just breathe slowly.”

<><><> 

Crippling fear…

Desperate to breathe… It was over his face… stifling him…

Sweat poured off him, soaking the sheets and the pillow.

He sat up, his hands pressed to his face, touching skin – a little bristly, and slick with sweat but indubitably his own. Faint light from the window showed him his hands… four fingers, a thumb on each. Just his own hands.

He lifted a hand to his head. Just hair – a bit too long, people said, but hair – not bare scalp. His ears? Softly rounded, ordinary; his own; the right ear reassuringly sticking out more than the other, nothing odd about it. His body – strange in his dream … dream? – so real… He touched his body. Smooth skin, fine hair on his arms, on his chest; thicker on his lower limbs and body, but at least there _was_ hair.

There was no need to fear … not now. He lay down again on sheets that were cold and damp with his sweat, found a dryer spot and relaxed. He still couldn’t remember what had happened… But it was all over… all over. He wasn’t dead, not if he could breathe. Everything would be all right. Breathe slowly, Napoleon had said. Just breathe slowly.

<><> 

<><><><> 


End file.
